This week's Soil Health Summit 2019 with Soil Health Partnership was the largest ever-360 registered attendees made their way to St. Louis to learn and network. A diverse group including farmers, corporations, educators and environmental groups spent two days talking about soil health.

The summit provided many takeaway messages and insights of interest. Here are just a few:

• Enthusiasm for learning new sustainability practices and adopting new farm management tools to protect and improve soil is not being slowed by a prolonged downturn in the farm economy. Many farmers, landlords, and others are investing in the long game to assure more sustainable and profitable agriculture.

• SHP outreach is building a diverse coalition of partners from farms all the way to consumers. The program and the network being created is growing rapidly.

• The common interest of proving the latest farming techniques, building healthier soils, cleaner water while maintaining farmer profitability is getting positive attention outside of agriculture, including with elected officials.

• Early in-field research shows no statistically significant yield drag from using cover crops and organic matter is increasing.

• More than 60 percent of the funding for the summit came directly from farmers or through their commodity organizations, like Corn Growers Associations, reflecting a major commitment that bodes well for the future.

• Sponsors like McDonald's, Environmental Defense Fund, Bayer, Cargill, state corn and soybean commodity groups, National Corn Growers, The Nature Conservancy, Corteva, Tyson and others provide more than just funding for a one-time event. They are key partners throughout the year in SHP's efforts to research, educate and advocate for soil health initiatives, providing a valuable link from farmers to consumers.